Initiative For Indigenous Futures

Initiative For Indigenous Futures

This intensive, 200-hour workshop begins with traditional storytelling –exploring the legends, histories and dreams of our communities– and proceeds to teach participants how to tell a story in a new way: as a video game. With that foundation in place, the youth then learn important industry-related skills, such as game design, art direction, 3D modeling and animation, sound design, and computer programming. The lessons are taught by a mix of game-industry professionals, Indigenous artists and a core team of senior students from Concordia University’s Computation Arts programme. Additionally, Indigenous mentors lend their considerable expertise as cultural consultants and provide moral support to the participants.

From mythic characters to traditional game mechanics to decolonized values, the Skins games reflect Indigenous teachings while offering youth basic technical skills. The instructors and mentors also refer to various university programs related to the disciplines being taught in the workshop.

“Everyone here is super friendly and eager to work, and I haven’t really seen that before. The work ethic here and just the amount of motivation everyone has here is through the roof… I’ve been surprised at how motivated I was.”

“It was good that we ran over time with the storytelling because that was the entire reason why we were here, just learning the culture, learning what we were going to make. And it’s kind of rare to just sit down and listen to a kumu, an aunty, or an uncle, just to sit down and talk story, just listen to them.”